Tala lays off 28 staff in its customer operations team

Digital credit provider Tala is cutting 28 jobs in its customer operations department, which it says is less than 3 per cent of its total workforce.

The lender stated that customer support queries have decreased in recent months as borrowers manage their loan repayment timelines in line with their income cycles.

“Twenty-eight positions in the customer operations team were declared redundant. This represents less than 3% of Tala's workforce, and Tala shall redirect these resources towards market expansion and product development,” the company said in a statement.

Tala entered Kenya in 2014 as Mkopo Rahisi before rebranding in 2016. It competes with Safaricom’s M-Shwari and Fuliza, which are linked to the telco’s mobile money platform M-Pesa, as well as similar standalone lenders like Branch.

The lender says its loan repayment rates are over 95 per cent.

Digital credit has been on the rise in Kenya in recent years, mainly due to easy accessibility and lower interest rates compared to banks, the growth of mobile money, and the regulation of digital credit providers by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).

A CBK report released in December 2024, for instance, showed that the number of Kenyans borrowing from microfinance institutions such as digital lenders has increased over five times since 2021.

As of October 2024, there were over 85 digital credit providers licensed to operate in Kenya by the CBK.